In modern business, companies are in a constant race with themselves of trying to utilize the resources they have as best as they can. Simply put, all companies try to become as efficient as possible. When talking about efficiency a lot of things might pop into your mind, but one of the most important assets that needs to be efficient is the workforce of a certain company.
This is especially true for small business organizations. Small business organizations usually have their whole teams working on certain projects, meaning they cannot add more members if they need to speed up the process. No, instead they have to manage their teams as best as they can and know how to organize them to do a job faster, while accurately assessing the time needed to complete the project.
Working with a group of people is challenging, and it’s tough to track progress, performance and effectiveness, or organize tasks and manage projects, without an adequate set of tools. Modern tech solutions give even the smallest organizations the option to look into their performance and see whether there are any gaps in their teams.
This is because these tools are usually quite cheap and sometimes even free. So, here are some of the best tools you can use to track the performance of your team and use them to improve its effectiveness as well.
1. HRweb
This software focuses on automating all-human resource processes that happen within your business. With this web-based software, HR managers can easily track and manage activities and the performance level of their teams. It has a single dashboard which combines all of the most important HR management features.
The dashboard includes, employee reviews, time tracking, time off, attendance, scheduling, behavior, goals, recruitment, and document management. It really excels at managing and tracking employee history, and the level of categorization that it allows.
2. AssessTEAM
This is a great all-around continuous feedback suite built to incorporate various process that allow you to monitor your effectiveness as a business and improve your results. With this tool, you can evaluate employees, their engagement, give them directions when they seem lost and run reports that show whether your processes are profitable to your whole business.
It’s a SAAS software solution directly focused on allowing managers and business owners to assess how well their team is performing. It has thousands of quantitative evaluations that focus on 360 degree peer reviews, project evaluations, annual appraisals and much more. There are so many methodologies for evaluation you can use in AssessTEAM meaning that any business can use it appropriately and customize it how it sees fit.
It gives you everything you need, but you need to have adequate management knowledge to be able to actually utilize all the options this tool gives you.
3. Asana
Asana is one of the most popular project management solutions for small business organizations. Besides the fact that it has amazing features and great functionality, the reason for this tool’s popularity is also the fact that it’s completely free for up to 15 users.
It’s used for management in real-time and it has an exceptionally intuitive interface which adopts the aesthetics of everyone’s go-to social media platform, Facebook. This means that people can easily learn to use all of its features.
By using Asana, you will be able to track time, assign adequate tasks to adequate people, get regular updates from the tool on how far your project has gone and visualize goals. The people behind Asana have also added a calendar feature that gives users the ability to graph tasks straight from the dashboard.
Most people who have used Asana were satisfied, although there were some who said that it’s not always so intuitive and that they faced difficulties because of the fact that Asana doesn’t have an offline mode.
4. TSheets
If you are running a construction business, assessing your work simply revolves around doing field work, and TSheets is the perfect tool you need to track the employees that are currently in the field without too much work.
This is a GPS based solution and when all of your employees install it on their phones, they just need to turn them on, check themselves in and start working, while you will have all the data needed to manage their work.
The manager behind this tool can also use TSheets for scheduling work both from an office or when out in the field. All employees who have this tool on their devices can also see who else is in the field and where they can be found.
This is a great option that allows people to collaborate in the field in real-time and switch their positions if needed.
5. Yodlee
This tool is designed for efficient financial management. Yodlee is a versatile piece of software that can handle various tasks; no matter if your business is a small team or you have a large corporation, it can get the job done.
This tool connects with all of your finance accounts and gathers them all in one place securely. You can see all balances and transactions in one window, with the option of running various reports on these numbers and analyzing them for the purpose of reducing all of your business expenses.
Additionally, with Yodlee you will get an account that can be used to pay your company bills or transfer funds when needed. This is about everything you can do with this tool, but all of these things are quite reliable and efficient.
Half of the financial organizations in the U.S. rely on Yodlee each day and this shows just how reliable and secure it is.
6. Journyx
As soon as you set up Journyx, it will automate all the time management data you have. This software can fill out all of your timesheets on its own, record time entirely on its own, or perform automatic mobile tracking; all of these things can be done with previous user validation.
Users can track their time spent on a project individually and a manager can do this as well. Additionally, users can take notes while they record their time in order to have a better overview of their work and progress.
Not only can you track how much work someone has done and in what time, but employees can also request time off through this platform and managers can review and approve or reject these requests. This software also has a Gantt chart that can be used by managers to monitor who is currently working.
7. Basecamp
This is truly one of the most popular project management tools that have been able to stand out from the crowd. It’s a very simple project management tool that allows managers to have a clear and simple overview off all their employees. They can assign tasks, give deadlines, add comments and check off their assignments once they have been completed.
The whole interface is very intuitive and all employees can get used to it quickly. Additionally, it has a great history bar where you can see all the activities, i.e. who made any major steps, when and which ones. It offers a simple overview for simple business processes and a manager can quickly see where the shortcomings of the team are and focus on improving them.
8. TinyPulse
If you are looking to learn how your employees feel at their jobs and how that affects their performance in a simple way, you should use TinyPulse. It’s straightforward and simple to the point where a kid will be able to easily understand how to give great input with this tool. The best thing of all is that an employee needs just a couple of minutes to feel everything out.
After you get the valuable input from people, you can get a good sense of what your company might need and what its current condition is. After that, you can discuss these issues when you gather for a team meeting.
9. Pipedrive
This tool focuses on monitoring a salesperson’s performance. It’s a CRM tool that has robust reporting and a lot of customization options. It’s quite easy to use and it also allows users to transfer data to other CRM systems. It doesn’t have many advanced features or options, but the things that it has work flawlessly. It’s usually used by smaller businesses that don’t have a lot of employees or customers.
These are different tools that focus on different aspects of business, but they can all be used for measuring how efficient your team is. It’s important to note that you should first analyze your business and see what your needs are before choosing a tool. There are thousands of similar tools out there and these are the ones that have proven to work well and that I’ve found intriguing. Do you have your favorites as well? What can they do? Feel free to provide your input.
